Tough gun laws didn't stop tragedy in New England

Saturday

Dec 22, 2012 at 12:01 AMDec 22, 2012 at 9:50 AM

The national conversation about lessons learned from the vile deeds of the Sandy Hook Elementary School murderer has begun. I was hoping this discussion might wait until the victims were properly memorialized and all the facts learned, but the usual anti-gun voices have elected to launch the gun-control debate without delay.

The national conversation about lessons learned from the vile deeds of the Sandy Hook Elementary School murderer has begun. I was hoping this discussion might wait until the victims were properly memorialized and all the facts learned, but the usual anti-gun voices have elected to launch the gun-control debate without delay.

It is widely accepted that each of us has the right to live and to defend ourselves from harm. We also have a moral imperative to defend ourselves and our families.

My sense is that educators and staff at schools feel the same obligation toward our children, and what have we done to assist them in fulfilling this duty? We have rendered them defenseless. We know schools have been targets of violence throughout time. Yet we deny educators and staff the tools to confront that threat. I think this is immoral.

Gun-control measures prevent people from providing for their own safety. If society renders them incapable of defending themselves, then society must assume the responsibility to protect them. But it hasn't done so.

People such as the Newtown, Conn., murderer expect to die once they've perpetrated their crime. In many mass-shooting cases, the shooter takes his own life at the last possible moment before he is confronted by deadly force. So that confrontation needs to occur as soon as possible. Police response time, even in a small, wealthy community like Newtown, is far from instantaneous. Therefore, the victims must have the ability to confront the violence with deadly force in the first moments. The staff at Sandy Hook demonstrated that they are ready to bear that burden, but we denied them the tools they needed.

An excellent piece of research on the question of whether armed citizen intervention is more desirable than waiting for police was assembled by Davi Barker. See http://bit.ly/Tatg3d. Barker studied about 100 mass shootings and found that that the average death toll when an active shooter is stopped by an armed civilian is 2.33. The average death toll when the police stop the shooting is 14.29. This is not because of police ineptitude; it is simply a function of how much time it takes to confront the shooter with deadly force.

I don't know what motivates advocates of gun bans, gun control or “reasonable restrictions” on gun ownership, but I know it is not logic. Connecticut is highly praised by the Brady Campaign Against Gun Violence. It describes the state as having “strong gun laws.”

Connecticut is surrounded by other states highly rated by the Brady Campaign. In the eyes of the Brady campaign, this means that these states have satisfied virtually every method of gun control the gun banners can dream up. The tragic results can be seen in Newtown.